Mars 1M
First Soviet Mars probes, both lost to launch failure.
The Soviet Mars program began with two uncrewed spacecraft, the Mars 1M series. These were the nation's first attempts to reach the red planet. Western outlets combined Mars and Sputnik to create the nickname "Marsnik" for these probes.
Quick Facts
- First launch
- October 10, 1960
- Second launch
- October 14, 1960
- Spacecraft mass
- about 650 kg / 1,433 lb
- Science payload mass
- 10 kg / 22 lb
- Launch vehicle
- Molniya rocket
- Western designations
- Marsnik 1
- Mars 1960A
- Korabl 4 (No.1); Marsnik 2
- Korabl 5
- Mars 1960B (No.2)
Facts from the source article.
Spacecraft
In October 1960, the Soviet Union attempted two Mars missions, both of which failed during launch. The first spacecraft, designated Mars 1M No.1 and known in the West as Marsnik 1, Mars 1960A, or Korabl 4, was destroyed on October 10. Two years later, NASA Administrator James E. Webb told the U.S. Congress that his agency believed this was a Mars flyby attempt. Some Soviet scientists later claimed they knew nothing of this first mission, insisting only the second launch was meant for Mars. But V. G. Perminov, the lead planetary spacecraft designer at the Lavochkin bureau, confirmed that both missions were identical and intended for Mars. The second spacecraft, Mars 1M No.2 (called Marsnik 2, Korabl 5, or Mars 1960B), launched on October 14. Both were carried by Molniya rockets. Their unproven third stages malfunctioned due to cavitation in the fuel lines, which starved the engines of thrust. As a result, neither probe reached its planned parking orbit around Earth. Mars 1M No.2 climbed to just 120 kilometers before falling back. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev had planned to bring models of the Mars probes to the United Nations that month, but after both failures, the models stayed packed away.
Spacecraft and subsystems
The Mars 1M spacecraft, as described by NASA, closely followed the Venera 1 design. It featured a cylindrical body roughly two meters tall, equipped with two solar panel wings, a high-gain net antenna measuring 2.33 meters, and a long antenna arm, with a total mass near 650 kilograms. Its scientific payload weighed about 10 kilograms and included a magnetometer mounted on a boom, a cosmic ray counter, a plasma-ion trap, a radiometer, a micrometeorite detector, and a spectroreflectometer designed to examine the CH band, which was considered a potential sign of life on Mars. All these instruments were placed on the spacecraft’s exterior. A photo-television camera sat inside a sealed module, capable of capturing images through a viewport when a sensor detected that the sunlit Martian surface was in range. Attitude control relied on a Sun-star sensor, with corrections made by a bipropellant rocket engine burning dimethylhydrazine and nitric acid. The craft’s orientation was set so its solar panels always faced the Sun during flight. Power came from the two-square-meter solar panels, which charged silver-zinc batteries. Communications used a decimeter band transmitter linked to the high-gain antenna for commands and telemetry, while radio bearing kept the antennas pointed toward Earth. Images were to be sent via an 8-centimeter wavelength transmitter through the same high-gain antenna. The booster, a Molniya rocket (also known as 8K78), included a fourth stage, and the complete launcher was designated SL-6/A-2-e.
More in Space Probes of ESA, Japan, China, India and the USSR
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